For over twenty years are in our country for harvesting oranges
Fourteen hours of work for 20 €, 5 of which go to the "corporal"
fields Driven by the mafia. And 'the revolt of the dispossessed of Italy
They sleep wherever it happens: tents, abandoned factories, houses ruined
are often subject to racist abuse and victims of organized crime
ATTILIO BOLZONI
One disused warehouses where the immigrants live in Rosario
and the revolt of the past, the revolt of blacks who wander our Italy. Those who are always moving, which are on the move perennial. Season after season, month after month and field after field. To pick oranges or grapes, olives or tomatoes. They live for the land and live in the land. Without a home without anything. In September they were in Sicily, around the vineyards of Marsala.
in November were among the olive trees in Puglia's most beautiful Mediterranean. A spring in Campania will migrate to break back in the gardens. Today they were here: in the Plains where the mafia mistress is fiercest in the world.
are Ghanaians, Sudanese, Ivorians, Senegalese. They come from Togo, Mauritania, Congo. But for years they are all 'Italian'. In order to survive. To resist. To eat. Every day can take almost 20 euro, for twelve also quattordici ore piegati in due a raccogliere le arance più profumate della Penisola e i mandarini - le clementine - più dolci.
Dicono che sono tremila, qualche volta diventano quattromila e forse anche di più. A Rosarno i calabresi sono appena in quindicimila. Quasi il novanta per cento del popolo nero che si trasporta come gli animali in branco non ha ancora trent'anni. Sono uomini, solo uomini.
Gli ultimi sono ultimi perché non hanno mai avuto un tetto tutto per loro. Dormono nelle fabbriche abbandonate della Calabria degli sperperi e delle ruberie di mafia e di Stato. Scheletri in mezzo al nulla. Si accampano fra i pilastri arrugginiti di cemento sulla costa, nelle masserie, in riva al mare. Rosarno è come Castelvolturno. Come Campobello di Mazara. Come tutta l'Italia che hanno sempre conosciuto. Il campo e il sonno.
È dal 1992 che vengono in questa Piana quando la zagara, il fiore dell'arancio, stordisce con il suo profumo. Non hanno mai freddo e non hanno mai caldo. Non hanno mai un contratto. I 'caporalì li prendono all'alba sui furgoncini, come al mercato del bestiame scelgono i più forti. Ogni 20 euro guadagnati ce ne sono 5 per loro: per i soprastanti che li fanno lavorare. È il pizzo che si fanno pagare i miserabili. E poi loro, per tre o quattro settimane racimolano il loro gruzzolo per non morire.
Non hanno documenti, non hanno passato. Solo la giornata counts: the day in the garden of oranges.
to Maghreb have found seven unsafe houses outside the village on the road to San Fernando. The Sudanese are somewhere else, under a big tent where they arranged the seats of old cars and slashed tires of a truck as bedside tables. And the Senegalese are still away, near the incinerator, in a factory that once refined olive oil. "I sleep here," Stephan told a year ago, a boy of twenty. Here is the door of a silo where once retained the oil. A metal cylinder where Stephan has brought all of his life: his blanket, a pair of shoes, a Koran, a stove, where every three or four nights can cook a few pieces of lamb and a tomato. Stephan has no water. Stephan does not have a bathroom. There are many like it also headquartered at Gioia Tauro and its port, others were dispersed to Rizziconi.
Everyone has seen for the first time in Italy from the rocks of Lampedusa. Loaded as cargo to Al Zuwara in Libya closer to Sicily. It landed as immigrants in Europe. There are blacks more fortunate, those who have found a shed as a roof for the night. Each warehouse has an inscription of paint reminiscent of the starting point for each group: Dakar, Rabat, Fes, Mombasa. Warehouses in the beds are made of cardboard. Yasser also has its bed of soggy cardboard. He had two months in Puglia ago, have it here in Rosario. "We sleep a little," he says. Dawn is already among the orange groves. And just at sunset in the back shed where there is written Casablanca. He says: "I live in fear, afraid to say to my family live here in Europe."
is almost twenty years the people of the last wanders from land to land in Italy. In the silence, indifference. No one ever says, but clearly are 'ndrine, the families of the Calabrian Mafia, most of all suck the blood to the last. The 'ndrine who oranges, which have everything in the Plains. The mobsters are waiting for them to step in after Christmas. When it is harvest time.
© reserved Reproduction: The Republic
(08 January 2010)
